Implantable medical device systems known in the art comprise several components, including an implantable medical device, such as a pacemaker or a defibrillator, pacing and/or sensing leads, and a programmer. The leads connect the implantable medical device to the heart of a patient. An implantable medical device, such as a pacemaker or a defibrillator, commonly stores a variety of different types of diagnostic data which assist a clinician or a physician in evaluating both the operation of the patient's heart and the operation of the implanted medical device. The specific diagnostic data stored by the implantable medical device includes a variety of information, including a real-time event recording of pacing events.
The programmer of the implantable medical device system provides multiple functions, including (a) assessing lead performance during a pacemaker or defibrillator implantation, (b) programming the implantable medical device, and (c) receiving feedback information from the implantable medical device for use by the operator.
An analyzer, which is sometimes a subcomponent of the programmer and sometimes an individual component, is a microprocessor-based component designed to assess the electrical performance of a pacing lead system used in conjunction with an implantable medical device system. The analyzer utilizes the programmer as a control and display platform.
It is desirous to view or store information relating to the implatable medical device system or relating to the specific patient having the implantable medical device therein at a remote location. For example, it is desirous to transfer specific information about the implantable medical device to a remote location such that the information can be stored within a database at the remote location or included within a report generated at the remote location. However, prior art medical device systems retrieve information from a medical device either in a memory dump format which mirrors the format of the device and basically "dumps" the information from the implantable medical device to the programmer, or in a specific format, such as an American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format, a waveform format, a numeric format, or a binary format. Information in any of these formats cannot easily be transferred via the Internet and converted into coherent information due to formatting issues. Thus, it is extremely difficult to interpret information in any of these formats at a remote location in order to properly store the information or generate a report based upon the information.
Therefore, there is a need for a system which will permit specific desired information to be transferred to a location remote from the medical device in a format which can easily be interpreted and manipulated. The system should easily allow for interpretation of data from the medical device such that the information can be stored within a database or such that a report can be generated based upon the transferred information.